When I first moved to Manhattan, lots of things surprised me. One of them was that people would live with no consideration to where to buy food. In a city where most people don't have cars, I would think people would want to live in walking distance for a supermarket, but plenty of people don't even live in walking distance to bodegas (those small, expensive corner stores, with a huge array of products that never seem to have the one item you want.)
Fresh direct seemed to fill that void. It opened in 2002 or 2003, and you would order on line and it would bring everything to your door and carry all those heavy items upstairs for you. I was very grateful. But like all things you come to rely on, then they go and change. They've been hit hard by Wholefoods opening in Tribeca, and are consequently shrinking their range.
We now have a wealth of food stores in the area - the forlorn Food Emporium (2 separate people have now complained to me that their chicken was off, and had to be returned. I myself bought bad milk from them. I don't know what's going on there, it's winter, outside is refrigerator temperature, how could food go off and still be in it's use by date?) The glamorous and yes, more expensive Wholefoods (though I totally buy their argument that their product is better)
Fresh direct has now taken two of the products that I know and love (and now that I look down my list, quite a few are in that ghostly grey implying that they are no longer available) and if they don't keep their range wide and varied, they'll start to be used like the bodegas - for emergencies only, rather than for staples.
That's my whinge for the day, I'm sorry that the fabulous Kansas burgers are no more. If only they had warned me, I could have cribbed the ingredient list and had a better chance of recreating them... well, it's back to the cookbooks...
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